Trimming the bush

It's the end of the season for flowers and veggies. But sadly there is no end of season for weeds. The very back of the plot is somewhat overgrown and needs a little care and attention. OK, it could probably do with a small scale tactical nuke, but not having a viable delivery method and minimum safe distance, I'll have to settle for secateurs, a garden fork and a broken wheelbarrow.

The Buddleja has now seen better days. And around the base are stinging nettles, some small brambles and bindweed.

It's not so difficult actually trimming everything, just awkward. Although I have found out that cheap gloves don't protect properly against stinging nettles. But at least the fork helps me keep a lot of it at arms length.

I trimmed the buddleja of anything that was overhanging the path, taking special care of any short stems that were at eye height, as those pose the biggest danger to the unwary. Fortunately these plants are pretty sturdy and will quite happily accept a short back and sides and still bounce back. Maybe with a fewer flowers next year, but still enough to keep the bees happy.

Mind you there are still a few flowers around that are currently keeping the bees happy.

Elsewhere? Well the chillies are just starting to set fruits. Not sure if they'll actually ripen, but we can try. And the Aubergines? Nah, they haven't started setting fruit at all. Guess they're a loss this year.

The 2021 Courgette Tally:

46

A gift from the Fox?

Looks like Foxy likes us and left us a gift in the middle of one of the beds.

In actual fact it's pretty common for foxes to grab leather gloves and run off to chew them. After all they are opportunists and will try and eat whatever they can. The leather of the gloves tends to make them think that there is something tasty in there. Unfortunately this turns out to not be the case so they'll leave it lying around. Much to the consternation of the allotmenteers who lose their work gloves. So make sure things are kept out of Foxy's reach.

The chillies are somewhat stagnating in the greenhouse now. Although they have a few flowers on them, I don't think they'll actually manage to produce any fruits before the "summer" is over.

This years summer seems to have been pretty much a washout. The recent floods have proved that somewhat. I'm not sure what this bodes for the future of the plot. Especially as climate change seems to be having a detrimental effect on growing.

But the recent rains have kicked the Buddleja into flowering and the bees are swarming all over it.

I just wish that it would have kickstarted the chillies.

The 2021 Courgette Tally:

26

Allotment Week: Clearing up

End of the season, time to get things cleared up ready for winter.

I dug and manured 4 beds today. Over the winter hopefully the worms will do their work on the manure and these beds should be great for next year. Not sure what I'm going to put in them yet, though.

Meanwhile, the wife washed the pots that we grew stuff in (and additional pots which we scrounged over the year). The water will be switched off over winter so it's best to get this done sooner rather than later.

I also gave the Buddljia a good hair cut as well. There were a lot of twiggy bits at the bottom, and I really want to encourage it to grow upwards, rather than outward.

There's a lot of other stuff thats been done as well, which I didn't get photos of. I cut down two of the three apple trees. The Bramley which is at a very awkward angle and has never produced anything worthwhile, and the small one at the back. Not sure what it is (was) because in the 5 years we've been on the plot it has never so much as flowered, never mind given fruit. The big apple tree will also get a haircut at some point over the winter as it need to be made a little more manageable, and it will also overhang the new pathway that I have to put in between us and plot 31.

This next week should see quite a bit of activity on the plot as I have a week off work. So now it's time to get lots of stuff done ready for next year.

Blooming heck

A little bit of sun and the flowers are blooming like crazy.

Cosmos

Buddleja

Star Flowers

Mixed wildflowers (Borage, Snapdragons, Cornflowers and a load I don't know)

Not only the flowers, the courgettes have shot up over this past week. So far we've harvested two of them. I suspect many, many more to follow.

One downside though, because we haven't been able to get to the plot in the evenings to pick the strawberries, a lot of them have simply ripened and rotted on the plants. I know it's such a waste, but there are only so many hours in the day.

Into the compost they go.

We still have a load of Tomatoes and Chillies to sort out. Guess that's my job for tomorrow after shop duty.

Still getting a harvest

The nights are drawing in now... especially because the clocks have changed. But down at the plot there are still some goodies to be had.

The potatoes have been sitting in the bags since August when I took all the tops off them to stop blight from spreading. But down in the cool earth they're still happy.

Wish I could say the same for the carrots though. We've never had much luck growing carrots. Tried all sorts on methods, but we just can't seem to get nice true, straight carrots. They always end up knobbly and branched. They taste fine though. The spuds and carrots we're used in a nice Japanese Curry. The Cape Gooseberries... well they're dessert.

On the plot though, we're now onto boring jobs which aren't very photogenic. Emptying and re-locating the compost bin is not the most glamorous work. So I didn't bother taking photos of that. But trimming to Buddleja turned this...

Into this...

Which I'm sure you'll agree is a lot better. It also won't be bothering the neighbours anytime soon. But there is still much to be done. But it gets dark early these days. Darker now they changed the clocks. Can we just leave the clocks alone for once? If you want lighter "evenings" then get up earlier. I still wake at stupid'o'clock in the morning. But my times have to fit to everybody else, so now I can't go to the allotment in the evenings. :(

Somebody else's rubbish is my treasure

The weather reports said that today would be nice and dry. So I thought I could get a whole load of stuff done down the plot. Word to the wise. Do not trust the weather reports.

One thing I noticed the moment I drove in. That big pile of wood chip from last week... gone. And yes it was a big pile, but there is none left now. Nor is there any manure left.

Well the first thing I did was start setting out my spuds in the greenhouse. A few of them have got little shoots on them, but they need a little more warmth and more light to get going properly. Also put in a few more onions that were left over from the batch I put in last November.Yes, they'll be maturing later but that's no problem.

Time to cut back the buddleja. Its sort of taken over in it's spot between the water barrels. Even more so as it has fallen over and now falls onto next door's plot. So it needs a damn good cutting back.

Whilst I was then tidying up the plot and pulling out a few weeds I took a look at the Swiss Chard that had grown in the 1st bed for the last two years. Last year there were big stumps in there, and they sprouted into a fine crop of leaves again. I expected this year to be the same. But no. The stumps were almost hollow and fell over as I was weeding the bed.

It would seem that Swiss Chard is a biennial. If I'd have taken the time to read up on it, I would have known this. However it's not a problem.The seeds that it produced last year dropped all over the bed and there are lots of little plants now appearing. So more Chard this year. Woo hoo!

I still had some rubbish that I pulled out from clearing out the fox mound. So I took it round to the waste bin area of the site, and there I saw that somebody had thrown away an old cloche. The metal frame was not much use, but what caught my eye was the fact that the covering was a tough clear polycarbonate. That could certainly be put to use.

My shed has had damaged windows for a while. Yes, at the moment the roof needs doing, but those windows have been broken far longer. So a little measuring and cutting and there are now two new windows in place. Somebody else's waste becomes my new windows.

However no sooner had I finished that than it started getting really cold, and dark clouds loomed. A few spots of rain got me heading into the greenhouse. Just as well as no sooner had I got inside than it started throwing down hail.

I spent the next 5 minutes listening to it bouncing off the greenhouse roof before deciding that I shouldn't have trusted the weather reports and headed for home.

The Tsunami has begun

It's been a while since I updated the blog. But that doesn't mean that things have stood still on the plot. On the contrary things are going great guns.

We are now well into the Courgette Tsunami. They are popping up at the rate of one or two a day, and have been doing so for the past 3 weeks.

The onions stagnated. Not sure what was going on with them, but the leaves all fell over and they just refused to grow any more. So I pulled them all out.

They're not as big as I would have liked, but that's no major problem. I left them to "dry" out a bit, just to wheedle out the better ones, and now I'll be soaking them in brine and turning them into pickled onions.

Whilst I'm pickling those, I may as well try pickling some courgettes too. At least the beetroot is still going strong, and the couple we've had so far for our salads are absolutely delicious. But again, I'll probably be pickling those as well.

That's the problem with the glut. There is only so much you can eat (been eating Courgettes everyday now... and there are still 8 spare despite giving some away) and given that we don't have a freezer of any capacity (just the tiddly one in the top of the fridge) it's hardly worthwhile attempting to freeze things. So we either have to pickle or dry.

Now the carrots were a bit of a shock too. We were watching them grow in the bags. And two of them we could just see poking their shoulders out above the soil and they looked to be a right old size. So we decided to pick them for dinner. Uh oh.

It seems that despite adding sand to the mixture in an attempt to loosen it up, it only compacted it even more. The roots had simply split and twisted into small unusable little tendrils, Doesn't bode well for the rest of the crop.

But one thing which has done really well is the flower crop. Not that we eat them of course, but the bees are loving the wild flowers, the artichoke flowers and most of all the buddleja.

Think I'm going to attempt to dry a courgette tonight and see how it turns out. Oh, and pickle the onions (and a courgette). And maybe make a courgette cake too.

Did I mention that we'll be having courgettes for dinner tonight?

Flowers and ... blight?

Things are proceeding as normal. Especially in this hot weather that we're currently experiencing. I would say "enjoying" but I'm not. But parts of the allotment are.

The Buddleja is liking it immensely and has started putting out a mass of flowers.

However I fear that there may be problems ahead. One of my Potato plants is showing worrying signs possibly of blight.

Even so I decided that it would be better to harvest it now rather than risk it.

Not too bad a crop for a small pot. But I worry about the rest of them. So far they all look green and healthy. But if it is blight then it can spread fast.

Blueberry bushes

Last week the final part of my order from Suttons was delivered. 3 Blueberry bushes. Now these plants like an acid soil. The so-called ericaceous soil. We do not have any such compost in the allotment shop so I had to head down to the Lower Morden Garden Centre to get some. Now this soil is lime free and appears to be made from, what I can only describe as ferns. It seems to be a strange sort of thing. But now being back home and a few helpful google searches later I understand why this is. It seems that in times gone past, ericaceous soil was made from peat. Well peat technically is a renewable resource, except the rate it renews at gets into the hundreds of years so it's not really a viable option. This Levington stuff is made from heather and tree bark. Anyhow, three new little bushes get a big pot of acid soil. I probably won't get any berries off them this year, but there is always next...

Also whilst we were there we bought a 6-pack. No not of beer. of Lavender. This fills the gap between the small rhubarb and the apple trees. Hopefully they will bush out a bit. In fact they need to bush out a lot to fill the gap.

Meanwhile, I have reset the leaning tower of water.

and planted my small yellow buddleja in between the tubs.

I'll have to keep it from getting swamped with all the stinging nettles. But thats no great hardship. It should soon grow a few long stems and take over that section. Careful origami of the stems should ensure that it doesn't spread and is self supporting.

Last week the foxes moved back in. Seems they have well and truly made themselves at home now. They have dug a back door to their mansion. Oh, and a side entrance. And a tradesman's entrance. And a sally port. And a small escape hatch on the top. I count no less than 6 entrances now. At least I can start sieving the soil they dug out to start filling my carrot and spud bags.

Meanwhile in the greenhouse there has been much sprouting of the seeds. But more of that after tomorrows session.